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Deleted member 2913

How is it's protection when you re offline?
Does it have some basic database for widespread threats?
(When you re offline there may be no zero day malwares....but what about known old threats,such as a worm on a USB?)

Level 1

For background I am a very experienced PC user, 30+ years and quite knowledgeable in IT security running lots of tests. In the past few months I have tried not only BD free, but also BD AV paid, Avast, Avira, MSE, F-secure, GData, Comodo, Webroot and many others previously.

BD AV free is simply the best choice if you want the highest available protection via a single product and which is combined in a manner that is extremely lightweight (great for low powered laptops), hassle-free, no pop-ups to upgrade to another product, no slowdown of web-browsing, pain free compared to every other AV that I have used, free or paid, although Webroot Secure Anywhere (a paid product) comes close in freedom from hassle and speed.

In addition I installed free Safepay from BD. Perfect for internet banking security. The two products are simply unbeatable, no need for anything else for most people. I also use a VPN when travelling, but that's it, Windows 7 / 8 firewall is more than good enough.

I used to spend a lot of time, even enjoyed, tinkering around with the various settings in AVs, but then I realised that life is too short to be spending time on that, worrying about configurations, surely there are some very bright developers out there who can take full responsibility, do a great job, and leave me without hassle, free my time? Fortunately BD have done that.

In fact I am so pleased with their effort that for appreciation I will continue to pay them for my Pro licence but keep on using the free product instead, it's so simple and the BD AV Pro actually gave me some problems, unlike the free version.

Level 12

For background I am a very experienced PC user, 30+ years and quite knowledgeable in IT security running lots of tests. In the past few months I have tried not only BD free, but also BD AV paid, Avast, Avira, MSE, F-secure, GData, Comodo, Webroot and many others previously.

BD AV free is simply the best choice if you want the highest available protection via a single product and which is combined in a manner that is extremely lightweight (great for low powered laptops), hassle-free, no pop-ups to upgrade to another product, no slowdown of web-browsing, pain free compared to every other AV that I have used, free or paid, although Webroot Secure Anywhere (a paid product) comes close in freedom from hassle and speed.

In addition I installed free Safepay from BD. Perfect for internet banking security. The two products are simply unbeatable, no need for anything else for most people. I also use a VPN when travelling, but that's it, Windows 7 / 8 firewall is more than good enough.

I used to spend a lot of time, even enjoyed, tinkering around with the various settings in AVs, but then I realised that life is too short to be spending time on that, worrying about configurations, surely there are some very bright developers out there who can take full responsibility, do a great job, and leave me without hassle, free my time? Fortunately BD have done that.

In fact I am so pleased with their effort that for appreciation I will continue to pay them for my Pro licence but keep on using the free product instead, it's so simple and the BD AV Pro actually gave me some problems, unlike the free version.

Level 1

I have zero connection with BD, in fact I had many frustrations with their GUI for their Pro products plus cr@p support from their inappropriately named helpdesk which was of no help at all, arrogant attitude and slow.

Then I discovered the unsupported, minimalistic free version with an unequaled detection engine developed by people who know what they are doing, unlike the Pro GUI team who don't have too much of a clue and saw that it had excluded the idiots who tried
to enforce stupid GUIs in the Pro products. The free version is all I need, and I believe it is far better than all the other free products out there, and many paid ones too.

Level 4

I have zero connection with BD, in fact I had many frustrations with their GUI for their Pro products plus cr@p support from their inappropriately named helpdesk which was of no help at all, arrogant attitude and slow.

Then I discovered the unsupported, minimalistic free version with an unequaled detection engine developed by people who know what they are doing, unlike the Pro GUI team who don't have too much of a clue and saw that it had excluded the idiots who tried
to enforce stupid GUIs in the Pro products. The free version is all I need, and I believe it is far better than all the other free products out there, and many paid ones too.

Level 37

Cavehomme, as a new member you can begin by posting a "New Member Introduction" (just click on forums at the top left of the page) after which you might enjoy sharing your security configuration (it's on the drop down list under "Malware help" above). Then, other members may not be skeptical as to whether you are truly a new private member. BTW, your posts are quite well written too! If my own posts could reflect such smooth rapport, especially whilst speaking so highly of Bitdefender Free, I'd probably have to introduce myself (all over again) on this site (no one would recognize me..) & then I'd have to agree to a lie detector test! Some might already know I only use Windows Native AV & Firewall. Thanks!

Level 1

I've tried that combo a few times too, but on my main PC the scheduled scans and updates just refuse to work. Originally it was connected with running Malwarebytes Pro at the same time and when uninstalled then MSE would schedule properly, but now even that fails. Creating tasks in task scheduler don't work any more, must be a problem with the OS or registry somewhere but I don't know how it got screwed up.

Level 37

Cavehomme, it is a strong indication of how very well spoken your post read to everyone, and my hope is that you'll take it for the true compliment it represents in response to your writing. OMG, your words were like listening to anchor readers on television news programs which translates: You sounded good! MT is definitely a gathering place for highly intelligent individuals, many of whom have a streak of not so latent paranoia (ahem..) which only serves to enhance what many of us were taught at a very young age, how to recognize (skeptically) things being "sold" which most often soundtoo good to be true.You are among the select few whom has thoroughly been welcomed before actually having made an introduction, ..and that is precisely where I'll be heading from here!

Level 1

Cavehomme, it is a strong indication of how very well spoken your post read to everyone, and my hope is that you'll take it for the true compliment it represents in response to your writing. OMG, your words were like listening to anchor readers on television news programs which translates: You sounded good! MT is definitely a gathering place for highly intelligent individuals, many of whom have a streak of not so latent paranoia (ahem..) which only serves to enhance what many of us were taught at a very young age, how to recognize (skeptically) things being "sold" which most often soundtoo good to be true.You are among the select few whom has thoroughly been welcomed before actually having made an introduction, ..and that is precisely where I'll be heading from here!

Level 1

I guess I got a bit carried away, I finally found something that worked very effectively and was zero hassle. I had just spent a weekend trying to get the supposedly easy-to-use MSE working, but the scheduling and updating just kept on failing. It could be an issue with my registry perhaps, or remnants of another AV but I've tried to remove them to the best of my ability. Tried loads of other AVs over the years. Finally installing BD free and getting zero hassle, I was in a happy place and I placed a couple of reviews on software sites. I guess my review-style was not an appropriate style to introduce myself on this forum, so I apologise if I wound-up some people the wrong way, it was not intended, I can see your point of view.

Deleted member 21043

How is it's protection when you re offline?
Does it have some basic database for widespread threats?
(When you re offline there may be no zero day malwares....but what about known old threats,such as a worm on a USB?)

I'm sure BitDefender would have some kind of offline database. I think what they do, is have a database file to use for the Anti-Virus, and when your online it updates. So even if your offline, your protected with a database. However, I am not a developer at BitDefender so I will not know how they designed their engine/s.

Deleted member 21043

How is it's protection when you re offline?
Does it have some basic database for widespread threats?
(When you re offline there may be no zero day malwares....but what about known old threats,such as a worm on a USB?)

The Heuristics in BD would probably still work, or they should at least. For anyone that doesn't know, Heuristics are another way of detecting malware.

For example, depending on the file size may be a possibility to if a file is infected/a virus or not.
*File Analysis, Sandbox testing (Sandbox testing is basically emulating the application, and monitoring it's behavior). Generic Signature Detection...

Level 1

A few weeks on since my first posting and my experience of BD free is that it most cases it seems to work very well, except one major area that I did not have time to troubleshoot further; on-demand scans.

I received one of those deceptive emails with an attached zip file proabably containing some malware. BD free did not alert me to it being malicious but my experience taught me to leave it alone. Whether BD free failed in detecting malware in Outlook email client, or the signature was not matching, I did not know at that tme.

Out of curiosity I then downloaded the zip attachment to my hard drive and scanned it with BD free, but it did not produce a scan result. Instead BD just seemed to queue it for a scan in the future without actually doing the scanning now. It was not even clear when that future scan would be done and because the interface is so minimalistic I was kept guessing. Eventually I gave up frustrated after seeing 4 queued scan jobs for the same file, but no real action!

I then scanned the zip with Malwarebytes and it also did not detect anything. I then decided to upload it to Virustotal and 9 AV companies did detect it, including Kaspersky, so did Avast, but none of the other big names, I was surprised, but it was 1 day-old malware apparently. I then ran Hitman Pro and indeed the Kaspersky part of the engine detected it. A few days later I read on a German Police website a warning about these exact same emails with malware attached warning people not to open, etc.

I did not have time to work out what BD free was trying to do, I just ended up thinking about my options for a while and decided to remove BD free and re-install BD AV Plus, (despite the BD engine not detecting this malware) because overall BD has given my system far fewer issues than any other European AV, and the performance is very light. BD detection rate has been consistently the best / top 3 although I do wonder about my experience when it failed me, but perhaps that was just BD free version failing, but I don't really know. The only AV company that beats BD in my experience is Webroot Secure Anywhere, formerly Prevx, but I no longer trust any USA AV company to be scanning my files in realtime - sorry US guys, no offence to you, but some of your politicians and NSA screwed up big time, you should have elected Ron Paul as President and the US and the world would be a better place

In conclusion, I don't want to knock BD free version too much other than requesting that they make a quick and clear decision as to whether they are going to properly support and improve the free version, clarifying things like the on-demand scan, or else use it simply as a bait to hook free users to upgrade. BD free is great for most people, but as an experienced user I was left confused and not sure of my protection status; that's not good for anyone with lower technical experience and no alternative plan of action, unlike myself.

I have had a BD AV Plus license since last summer and for some time it did crash and slow things down but since my re-install after removing the free version it has behaved without problems, not slowing down browsing or overall system. The laptop detection mode seems to be working well. I have installed it on two other laptops in my house and all seems OK.

Regarding support, I have to agree that BD support is appalling, not only extremely slow but also quite useless as well as the attitude of some staff being arrogant, even rude. Conversely there are some helpful BD people on their forum.

BD must have upset a lot of people because they giving away their great protection for very low prices, but they seem to be copying Avast who have tanked in the last year with quality and support - but the difference is that BD detection rate is superb, unlike the plummeting Avast - I first used Avast about 15+ years ago so I know them well, they need to stop the rot.

As for BD, they do the job that I pay them to do, apart from one trojan as explained above, but no AV vendor is 100%, although BD come very close and closer than most / all of the others. So am prepared to suffer poor support for a short while, until my license comes up for renewal in July, then I will make a decision not to continue with their poor support and choose another AV, or hopefully they will have improved it by then.

Level 21

"the difference is that BD detection rate is superb, unlike the plummeting Avast"

I've been reading the recent AV tests. Avast! is not at the very top tier. But its free edition still performs very respectably alongside the paid AVs in the tests. It does seem, however, that Qihoo is passing it and becoming the best performing free AV.

I would like to see Bitdefender free tested, but you know Bitdefender would be horrified by that.

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